Yvonne De Carlo

Margaret Yvonne Middleton (September 1, 1922January 8, 2007), known professionally as Yvonne De Carlo, was a Canadian-American actress, dancer and singer. She became a Hollywood film star in the 1940s and 1950s, made several recordings, and later acted on television and stage.

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, De Carlo was enrolled by her mother in a local dance school when she was three. By the early 1940s, she and her mother had moved to Los Angeles, where De Carlo participated in beauty contests and worked as a dancer in nightclubs. She began working in motion pictures in 1941, in short subjects. She sang "The Lamp of Memory" in a three-minute Soundies musical and in 1942 signed a three-year contract with Paramount Pictures, where she was given uncredited bit parts in important films. Her first lead was for independent producer E. B. Derr in the James Fenimore Cooper adventure '' Deerslayer'' in 1943.

She obtained her breakthrough role in ''Salome, Where She Danced'' (1945), a Universal Pictures release produced by Walter Wanger, who described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." The film's publicity and success turned her into a star, and she signed a five-year contract with Universal. Universal starred her in its lavish Technicolor productions, such as '' Frontier Gal'' (1945), '' Song of Scheherazade'' (1947), and '' Slave Girl'' (1947). Cameramen voted her "Queen of Technicolor" three years in a row. Tired of being typecast as exotic women, she made her first serious dramatic performances in two film noirs, ''Brute Force'' (1947) and '' Criss Cross'' (1949).

The first American film star to visit Israel, De Carlo received further recognition as an actress for her leading performances in the British comedies '' Hotel Sahara'' (1951), ''The Captain's Paradise'' (1953), and '' Happy Ever After'' (1954). Her career reached its peak when eminent producer-director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Moses' Midianite wife, Sephora, her most prominent film role, in his biblical epic ''The Ten Commandments'' (1956), for which she won a Laurel Award for Topliner Supporting Actress. Her success continued with other notable starring roles in '' Flame of the Islands'' (1956), ''Death of a Scoundrel'' (1956), '' Band of Angels'' (1957), and ''The Sword and the Cross'' (1958), in which she portrayed Mary Magdalene.

She starred in the CBS sitcom '' The Munsters'' (1964–1966), playing Herman Munster's glamorous vampire wife, Lily, a role she reprised in the feature film ''Munster, Go Home!'' (1966) and the television film ''The Munsters' Revenge'' (1981). In 1971, she played Carlotta Campion and introduced the popular song "I'm Still Here" in the Broadway production of the Stephen Sondheim musical '' Follies''. ''Yvonne'', her best-selling autobiography, was published in 1987. A stroke survivor, De Carlo died of heart failure in 2007. She was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to motion pictures and television.

Early life

De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922, at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her nickname was "Peggy" because she was named after the silent film star Baby Peggy. Her mother, Marie De Carlo, was born in France to a Sicilian father and a Scottish mother. Marie, a "wayward and rebellious" teenager, had aspired to become a dancer and worked as a milliner's apprentice until she met Peggy's father, William Shelto Middleton, a salesman from New Zealand with "piercing eyes of pale blue, and a wealth of straight black hair." Marie and William married in Alberta, where they lived for a couple of months before returning to Vancouver. They moved in with Marie's parents, but the marriage was troubled. Peggy had only two memories of her father: climbing up to his knee and crawling toward his feet. By the time Peggy was three, William was involved in various swindles and fled Canada aboard a schooner, promising to send for his wife and child. Marie and Peggy never heard from him again; rumors said that he remarried twice and had more children, worked as an actor in silent films, or died aboard a ship. Peggy later wrote, "My own assumption is that he died before he had the chance to discover that his Baby Peggy had become a Hollywood actress, or I think he would have tried to contact me."

After William's departure, Marie left her parents' home and found work in a shop. Marie and Peggy lived in a succession of apartments in Vancouver, including one that had no furniture or stove, and periodically returned to the De Carlo home, "a huge white frame house", at 1728 Comox Street in Vancouver's West End neighborhood. Marie's parents, Michele "Papa" De Carlo and Margaret Purvis De Carlo, were religious, attended church regularly, and held services in their parlor. Michele, a native of the city of Messina, had met Margaret in Nice, France. They married in 1897, had four children, and settled in Canada.

De Carlo attended Lord Roberts Elementary School, located a block away from her grandparents' home.

De Carlo originally wanted to be a writer. She was seven when a school assignment, a poem she wrote titled "A Little Boy", was entered in a contest run by the ''Vancouver Sun''. She won and received a prize of $5, which according to De Carlo, meant as much to her at that time as if she had won the Nobel Peace Prize. She also wrote short plays, which she usually staged in her grandparents' house, and even adapted Charles Dickens' ''A Christmas Carol'' for a neighborhood performance.

Marie wanted her daughter to have a career in show business and made sure Peggy received the necessary singing and dancing lessons. Peggy joined the choir of St. Paul's Anglican Church to strengthen her voice, and when she was ten (or three, according to a 1982 interview), her mother enrolled her in the June Roper School of the Dance in Vancouver. In May 1939, a ''Variety'' news item listed Yvonne de Carlo as one of the performers at the opening of Hy Singer's Palomar ballroom (also known as Palomar Supper Club) in Vancouver.

Early career

Beginnings in Hollywood (1940–1942)

De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles. In 1940, she won second place in the Miss Venice beauty contest, and placed fifth in that year's Miss California competition (and can be seen in that pageant at 0:36 of the British Pathé film "A Matter of Figures"). At the Miss Venice contest, she was noticed by a booking agent who told her to audition for an opening in the chorus line at the Earl Carroll Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

De Carlo and her mother arrived at Earl Carroll's for the audition, but after learning that Carroll would have to examine her "upper assets" before hiring her, De Carlo and her mother searched for work at another popular Hollywood nightclub, the Florentine Gardens. They met the proprietor, Nils Granlund, and he introduced De Carlo to the audience before she tap danced to " Tea for Two". Granlund then asked, "Well, folks ... is she in or out?" The audience responded with "a rousing round of applause, with whistles and cheers", and De Carlo got the job. She started in the back of the chorus line, but after months of practice and hard work, Granlund featured her in a " King Kong number." In it, she danced, and cast off several chiffon veils before being carried away by a gorilla. She was given more solo routines and also appeared in her first soundie.

She had been dancing at the Florentine Gardens only a few months when she was arrested by immigration officials and deported to Canada in late 1940. In January 1941, Granlund sent a telegram to immigration officials pledging his sponsorship of De Carlo in the U.S., and affirmed his offer of steady employment, both requirements to reenter the country.

In May 1941, she appeared in a revue, ''Hollywood Revels'', at the Orpheum Theatre. A critic from the ''Los Angeles Times'' who reviewed it said the "dancing of Yvonne de Carlo is especially notable." She also made her debut on network radio with Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen, who were performing extracts from a series based on their Flagg-Quint performances.

De Carlo wanted to act. At the encouragement of her friend Artie Shaw, who offered to pay her wages for a month, she quit the Florentine Gardens and hired a talent agent, Jack Pomeroy. Pomeroy got De Carlo an uncredited role as a bathing beauty in a Columbia Pictures B film, '' Harvard, Here I Come'' (1941). She had one line ("Nowadays a girl must show a front") in a scene with the film's star, boxer Maxie Rosenbloom. Her salary was $25 and her work in the film got her into the Screen Actors Guild. When no other acting jobs came her way, she decided to return to the chorus line and auditioned for Earl Carroll, who hired her. While working for Carroll, she won a one-line part in '' This Gun for Hire'' (1942) at Paramount. Carroll found out and fired her, as he did not allow his dancers to work outside the nightclub without his permission. She asked Granlund if he could rehire her and he did. In December 1941, she was dancing in the revue ''Glamour Over Hollywood'' at the Gardens. America's entry into World War II saw De Carlo and other Florentine dancers busy entertaining troops at USO shows. A skilled horsewoman, she also appeared in a number of West Coast rodeos.

Paramount Pictures (1942–1944)

Following an interview at Paramount, De Carlo was cast as one of Dorothy Lamour's handmaidens in '' Road to Morocco'' (1942). She was given a screen test for the role of Ata in '' The Moon and Sixpence'', but lost the part to Elena Verdugo. She returned to Paramount for a bit role in ''Lucky Jordan'' (1942) and found another small part in a Republic Pictures film, '' Youth on Parade'' (1942), which she later called a "dreadful ... bomb". After recovering from a bout of bronchial pneumonia, she went to Paramount Pictures and signed a six-month contract, possibly going up to seven years, starting at $60 a week.

For her first assignment as a Paramount player, De Carlo was loaned out to Monogram Pictures to play a Florentine Gardens dancer in ''Rhythm Parade

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